Maria: In English, here are eleven stories fom Democracy Now! Remember that the headlines are provided daily in English and Spanish and please pass on to your friends. Peace.

Bush's Church Calls for U.S. Troop WithdrawalPresident Bush and Dick Cheney are facing more opposition about the war in Iraq - this time from their own church. Last week the United Methodist Church passed a resolution calling for the U.S. to withdraw from Iraq. The resolution read in part "As people of faith, we raise our voice in protest against the tragedy of the unjust war in Iraq. Thousands of lives have been lost and hundreds of billions of dollars wasted in a war the United States initiated and should never have fought." The church board also called on Congress to create and independent, bipartisan commission to investigate U.S. treatment of detainees overseas. October Marks Fourth Deadliest Month for U.S. In IraqAnd U.S. losses in Iraq continue to rise. Seven U.S. soldiers were killed on Monday bringing the monthly death toll to 92. This made October the fourth deadliest month of the war for U.S. troops. Senate Democrats Force Closed Session on Pre-War IntelligenceOn Capital Hill Tuesday, Democrats forced the Republican-controlled Senate into closed session to question intelligence used by the Bush administration to justify the invasion of Iraq. In the rare move, public spectators were cleared out, the doors were closed and the lights were dimmed in the Senate chamber. The intelligence behind the US invasion of Iraq remains a key issue with last week’s indictment of Vice President Cheney chief of staff Lewis Libby over the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. Shortly before forcing the closed session, Democratic Senate Minority leader Harry Reid said: "The Libby indictment provides a window into what this is really all about, how this administration manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to sell the war in Iraq and attempted to destroy those who dared to challenge its actions." Republican leaders dismissed the closed session as a political stunt. However, they agreed to a bi-partisan review of a Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation into pre-war intelligence. Democrats have called the investigation inadequate. Libby Resigns After Five Count Indictment in CIA Leak CaseFor the first time in 130 years, a White House staff member has been indicted for crimes committed in the office. On Friday, Lewis "Scooter" Libby was indicted on five counts of obstruction of justice, perjury to a grand jury and making false statements to FBI agents during the CIA leak investigation. If convicted, he faces up to 30 years in prison and $1.25 million in fines. Until Friday Libby was a central figure in the Bush White House holding three top positions: chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, national security adviser to the vice president and assistant to the president. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald announced the indictment on Friday. President Bush's chief advisor Karl Rove has so far escaped indictment for his role in the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame, the wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson. But Rove remains under investigation. On Sunday Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid called on Bush to apologize and for Rove to resign. Bush and Cheney have both praised Libby for his service. The top candidate to replace Libby is David Addington who currently works as the vice president's legal counsel. Three years ago he wrote a memo that asserted the war on terrorism renders obsolete the Geneva Convention's limitations of questioning detainees. Ambassador Wilson accused Libby and the White House of outing his wife, Valerie Plame. He said, "Senior administration officials used the power of the White House to make our lives hell for the last 27 months. But more important, they did it as part of a clear effort to cover up the lies and disinformation used to justify the invasion of Iraq. That is the ultimate crime."

After "Week From Hell" Bush's Approval Rating DropsNew polls show that the public trust in the Bush administration has reached a new low. A new ABC News/Washington Post Poll has found Bush's approval rating to be just 39 percent - the lowest of his presidency. Meanwhile 46 percent of the country says the level of honesty and ethics in the government has declined under Bush. Only 15 percent of the country feel Bush has restored honesty and ethics to the government. This comes after what Time Magazine described as the worst week of Bush's presidency. Within a span of four days the U.S. death toll in Iraq topped 2,000, Harriet Miers withdrew her nomination to the Supreme Court and Lewis Scooter Libby was indicted and resigned. Time described it as Bush's QUOTE "Week from Hell." Italy Warned US On Iraq-Niger DocumentsMeanwhile, the Italian government says it warned the Bush administration documents purporting to show an Iraqi attempt to buy uranium from Niger were fakes. Italian Senator Massimo Brutti said the warning was issued around the same time President Bush made the claim in his State of the Union speech of January 2003. Brutti later called the Associated Press to retract the statement. The claim played a key part in the Bush administration’s attempts to justify the war on Iraq. CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity was leaked after her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, questioned the Iraq-Niger connection. HRW Identifies Poland or Romania as Location of Secret CIA PrisonThe Bush administration is refusing to confirm or a deny a Washington Post account that the CIA is using a secret, Soviet-era prison run in Eastern Europe to hold prisoners. The prison is apparently a part of global network of CIA-run prisons in several countries. At the request of US officials. the Post did not reveal the location of the facilities. Human Rights Watch has identified Poland and Romania as likely locations, citing flight records of CIA aircraft transporting detainees from Afghanistan. A spokesperson for the Polish defense ministry denied the allegations to the Financial Times. A Romanian spokesperson declined comment. Agence France Presse is reporting Czech Republic Interior Minister Frantisek Bublan says his country recently turned down a US request to set up a detention center on its territory.

Red Cross Calls for Access to Detainees in Secret PrisonsThe International Committee of the Red Cross has called for access to detainees held in secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe. The unidentified facilities were revealed in Wednesday's Washington Post. Meanwhile, the European Union announced it would be looking into allegations made by Human Rights Watch that Poland and Romania are the likely sites of the prisons. Both countries have denied the allegations. Historian: NSA Falsified Gulf of Tonkin EvidenceThe New York Times is reporting new evidence has emerged about the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 that precipitated the escalation of the Vietnam War. A National Security Agency historian has determined officers at the agency knowingly falsified intelligence in order to make it look as if North Vietnam had attacked U.S. destroyers in the Tonkin Gulf. Following the alleged attack, Johnson ordered retaliatory air strikes on North Vietnamese targets and used the event to persuade Congress to pass the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which led to the escalation of the war. The NSA’s historian determined the intelligence may have been falsified not for political reasons but to cover up earlier mistakes made by intelligence officers. However, the Times reports there has also been a cover up of the historian’s account, which was first published in a classified in-house journal of the National Security Agency in 2001. The historian’s article remains classified. According to the Times, policymakers at the NSA feared the release of the historical study might prompt uncomfortable comparisons with the flawed intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq.

Riots Intensify in Paris SuburbsIn France, clashes intensified as rioting in several Paris suburbs entered its eight day. The violence started October 27 following the deaths of two teenagers in the poor area of Clichy-sous-Bois. The two teens were electrocuted in a power grid while fleeing from police. One of the child’s parents has filed a complaint with local authorities. The suburbs are home to a large North African community and plagued by chronic unemployment and poverty. Unrest has now spread to at least 20 towns. Police say they’ve made over 140 arrests. French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has drawn criticism for calling the suburban youths "scum," and pledging a "war without mercy" on them. Funeral Service Held For Rosa Parks in DetroitIn Detroit Wednesday, over 4,000 mourners attended a funeral service for civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks. The service lasted over seven hours, three hours past its scheduled time. Guests included the Rev. Jesse Jackson, former President Bill Clinton, and singer Aretha Franklin. Parks died on October 24th at the age of 92.

Kat here filling in for C.I. I like doing the posts on The Laura Flanders Show because Laura Flanders is smart. She's the good kind of smart, which is important. There are some people who are smart and bore the hell out of you. They just want to recite their little prepared speeches. Flanders wants to share with you. You can tell that by her interviews and by the phone calls she takes. She's not screaming at callers, she's listening to them. In a better world,The Laura Flanders Show would be on CNN each night instead of Larry King hollering "for the hour!" about whichever parent of a kidnapped blonde he managed to book.

But we're not living in a better world these days. We can make it a better world and one way is to listen to The Laura Flanders Show. I swear I don't know Flanders or anyone on her staff, nor do I get free merchandise for these plugs!

Laura's doing another remote broadcast. She was in DC in September when people were standing up and being counted and tonight she's in Mississippi:

Besides the PODCAST above, you can listen to it over broadcast radio (check there to see if there's a station in your area), over XM Satellite Radio (channel 167) or you can listen online.It starts in the east at 7 p.m. and goes off at 10 pm. If you listen online, you'll hear it then. If you're listening over broadcast radio, you'll need to consult the schedules for air time.

Remember it airs on Saturdays and Sundays. Sundays is not a repeat, Laura's in New Orleans tomorrow. So arm yourself with knowledge and if you haven't listened you'll quickly realize there's nothing stuffy about this show. Laura knows how to kick off her shoes and let her hair down.

So Shirley won't rag on my ass, the e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com. And thank you, Martha for forwarding the e-mail on tonight's show.

We are all outlaws in the eyes of AmericaIn order to survive we steal cheat lie forge fred hide and dealWe are obscene lawless hideous dangerous dirty violent and youngBut we should be togetherCome on all you people standing aroundOur life's too fine to let it die andWe can be togetherAll your private property isTarget for your enemyAnd your enemy isWe

I'm not sure whether it's the times that are trippin' back to the sixties this morning, or it's just the New York Times trippin' back. But as you grab the paper, light the incense. You'll need it (maybe more?) as you note Che Guevara on the front page of the Times. (There actually should be an exclamation point at the end of that since, during his life, the Times played down Che.)

Like the truth refusing to be hidden and come back to haunt the paper of record, Che's face prominently displayed on banners in Mar Del Plata suggests things are far less "grey" than the Grey Lady would like them to be.

Dolly Mae Rohter and Dolly Mae Bumiller tell us that Bully Boy's "troubles trailed him" like ugly skid marks (okay, I added that part) "to an international summit meeting here on Friday as . . . protesters turned violent just blocks from the gathering site, and Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's fiery populist leader, rallied a soccer stadium filled with at least 25,000 people against the" Bully Boy.(The Dolly Maes need to inflame the average cautious Times reader so they say "the United States." They are wrong. And you can be damn sure neither Dolly Mae interviewed any protester.)

Bully Boy works in a joke and the Dolly Maes jot it down -- Bully Boy on the prospect of meeting Hugo Chavez by chance: "I will, of course, be polite. That's what the American people expect their president to do, is to be a polite person." Big Babs must have taught the children that flipping the bird was just a quicker, non-verbal way of saying "Thank you."

If, as your eyes adjust to the front page, you're searching for your stash, pray that you don't share a home with a headline writer for the Times -- the one responsible for "Iraq's Lethal Traffic: Warning! Anarchy Ahead" has already smoked your stash. The author of the article (though not the headline), Sabrina Tavernise, attempts to write something, anything, on the topic of road rage . . . in Iraq. (Well, in Baghdad.) (Well, in the Green Zone.) Speaking to anyone not intimidated by the bodyguards sporting the black t-shirts that read "NEW YORK TIMES," Tavernise finds Riyad Hadi Hassan who says, coming off like anyone forced to venture once too often down Van Nuys Blvd., "If someone tries to speak to me, maybe I'll kill him."

But as you're reading along singing "Nathan Le Frameer:"

The cars and buses bustled thru the bedlam of the dayI looked thru window-glass at streets and Nathan grumbled at the greyI saw an aging cripple selling Superman balloonsThe city grated thru chrome-plateThe clock struck slowly half-past-noonThru the tunnel tiled and turningInto daylight once again I am escapingOnce again goodbyeTo symphonies and dirty treesWith parks and plastic clothesThe ghostly garden grows

you suddenly stop as Tavernise attempts pith: "And while in other capitals a traffic jam may cause you to miss a meeting, in Baghdad it may get you kidnapped or even killed." Tavernise follows that with a few statistic (body count for Iraqis, low estimate 26,797, and fatality count for American troops, 2046, aren't among Tavernise's statistics). But ugly realities, even mild ones, can't intrude for too long in the Times' press releases from the Green Zone so, before you know it (ninth paragraph), Tavernise is slapping a happy face sticker on it all:

But for all the frustration they cause, the seas of idling cars are also a sign of progress [C.I. note: at the barrel of a gun].Salaries have jumped from a few dollars a month under Saddam Hussein to a few hundred now [C.I. note: the cost of living has also jumped], turning Iraqis into consumers overnight [C.I. question: And they were what exactly before?], buying up air-conditioners, jewelry and, of course, cars. [C.I. note: Apparently Brina doesn't think any purchases were made under Saddam].

You quickly realize that the song to sing to Tavernise is "Cactus Tree:"

There's a man who sends her medalsHe is bleeding from the warThere's a jouster and a jester and a man who owns a storeThere's a drummer and a dreamerAnd you know there may be moreShe will love them when she sees themThey will lose her if they followAnd she only means to please themAnd her heart is full and hollowLike a cactus tree

Stephan Labaton's singing "The Fool on the Hill" in "Spending Inquiry For Top Official On Broadcasting" which charts the continued downfall of cycle hog Kenny Y. Tomlinson. E-mails have been seized by the State Dept. during this investigation. Before you start thinking, "Condi is actually trying to help" . . . don't. The e-mails include ones exchanged between Kenny and Karl Rove. Weirdness, like rust, never sleeps -- is anyone not getting "Threats for the Day" from Karl? Maybe those in his e-mail circle could just use the button to report him for "spam" and Yahoo could do what Fitzgerald seems afraid to, shut Karl down. So the inspector general is attempting to figure out how much Kenny disgraced himself and what laws, if any, were broken.Of the seized e-mails, State Department investigators . . . have shared some material with the inspector general at the corporation . . ." Why some? And why is the State Dept. interfering with an ongoing investigation? Does Bully Boy know? He's still parroting that he can't even make a statement in an ongoing investigation.

Labaton, noting Voice of America, gets off a howler:

The board [Broadcasting Board of Governors] has been troubled lately over deep internal divisions and criticism of its Middle East broadcasts. Members of the Arab news media have said its broadcasts are American propaganda.

Now why is Labaton playing the he-said/she-said card there? Why is Voice of America not allowed to broadcast in this country? Because it is propaganda. "Members of the Arab news media" are correct. This isn't a claim, it's a fact.

Day after day alone on the hill The man with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still But nobody wants to know him They can see that he's just a fool And he never gives an answer But the fool on the hill sees the sun going down And the eyes in his head See the world spinning round

Labaton's singing that song to Kenny but, considering Labaton's own howlers, he's also serenading himself.

The US government has been eye balling Iraq while singing:

Money, it's a gas.Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash.New car, caviar, four star daydream,Think I'll buy me a football team.Money, get back.I'm all right jack keep your hands off of my stack.Money, it's a hit.Don't give me that do goody good bullsh*t

But James Glanz tells us the good times may be coming to an end in "U.S. Should Repay Millions to Iraq, A U.N. Audit Finds." How much are we talking? "An auditing board sponsored by the United Nations recommended Friday that the United States repay as much as $208 million to the Iraqi government for contracting work in 2003 and 2004 assigned to Kellogg, Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary."

Which brings us to the story with a smaller photo on the front page (a car on fire), Craig S. Smith's "Rioting by Immigrants Embroils Paris Suburbs." As numerous e-mails continue to note, Ty addresses this last Sunday at The Third Estate Sunday Review. The Times has only recently discovered the story. Was Craig S. Smith free-manning-in-Paris-ing it? Or did the Times just not realize that this was a story (for days and days and days)? It is a story and Smith's a bit more even handed then in earlier accounts (or in yesterday's editorial which demonstrated that the editorial board has apparently never visisted the Paris suburbs or cared much about them). Smith's more even handed than his past reporting on this, call it an improvement but don't call it good reporting. Does any reporter at the Times ever think to ask non-elected officials what they think or do the orders for that need to come from up above?

The reliance on "official sources" comes from above so the reporters may just be playing it safe when they build whole articles around statements from them without ever actually exploring an area or speaking to people from the area. But it makes for bad reporting. (This may be, Smither's report, the best that the Times can do on a topic like this.)

The Times has never been an investigative paper. It's always relied far too much on what unnamed sources wanted passed on. Smith's article may be the best one can hope for from the paper of record which's print stance can best be summed up as:

And the rain beats on my roofLook through my window to the street belowSee the people hurryin' byWith someone to meet, some place to goAnd I know I should let go

Two final points on the Times. First, Elisabeth Bumiller's "" should have been front paged. (Apparently traffic reports are more important than indictments -- guess the Times thinks it's casual Saturday?) Second, I'm going by the print edition and dictating this entry over the phone (thank you to ___ for taking this down) and I'm told that the Times has a report online by Douglas Jehl. It's not in the international section of the print edition before me. (And we're going by print headlines if you see a different headline online.) From Douglas Jehl's "Report Warned Bush Team About Intelligence Suspicions:"

A high Qaeda official in American custody was identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained Al Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons, according to newly declassified portions of a Defense Intelligence Agency document.The document, an intelligence report from February 2002, said it was probable that the prisoner, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, "was intentionally misleading the debriefers" in making claims about Iraqi support for Al Qaeda's work with illicit weapons.The document provides the earliest and strongest indication of doubts voiced by American intelligence agencies about Mr. Libi's credibility. Without mentioning him by name, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, and other administration officials repeatedly cited Mr. Libi's information as "credible" evidence that Iraq was training Al Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons.Among the first and most prominent assertions was one by Mr. Bush, who said in a major speech in Cincinnati in October 2002 that "we've learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases."

The accounts collected by the U.S. military in reports dated Oct. 15-19 were made available to IPS on condition that they would not be quoted directly and that the U.S. military unit forwarding them would not be identified. The first-person accounts gathered by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Nineveh were obtained and translated by Michael Youash, executive director of the Iraq Sustainable Democracy Project in Washington. The names of the NGOs were not provided in the document given to IPS because of fears of reprisals. None of the accounts reported by the military are from Sunnis. All of the sources quoted in those reports are either Kurds or trusted Assyrian Christians who have been advisors to the U.S. military on local developments and are generally favourable to the constitution. Thus they represent the view from those in the province least likely to have a political motive for depicting the referendum as rigged. The reports compiled by the U.S. military include an account of the voting in Mosul by an Assyrian Christian source which observes that Kurds voted for the constitution but represent only a small percentage of the estimated 1.7 million people in the capital -- which holds roughly two-thirds the population of the province. That account contradicts both widely reported explanations for the alleged failure of the Sunnis to achieve a two-thirds majority against the constitution in Nineveh -- that the Sunnis in Mosul were divided over the constitution, and that Kurds represent a very large proportion of the population of the city. The final official vote total for Nineveh was 395,000 "no" and 323,000 "yes". However the IECI in Nineveh had told the media on Oct. 16 and again on Oct. 17 that 327,000 people had voted for the constitution and only 90,000 against, with only 25 out of the 300 polling stations in the province remaining to be counted. Thus, between the two counts, 5,000 yes votes had apparently disappeared and 295,000 no votes had mysteriously materialised -- all from only 25 polling places. No explanation has ever been provided by election authorities for those contradictory data. The U.S. military's informant supports the view that Kurdish and Sunni vote totals in Mosul were significantly altered.

The Times has yet to note Porter's article. (Probably won't.) So make sure you're aware of it.I am on the road speaking this weekend so a) members use the private e-mail address which I will be checking regularly and b) entries will be delayed today but they will go up. (The usual Saturday ones.) The e-mail address for this site (public) is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Songs, from the top, Jefferson Airplane's "We Can Be Together" (Volunteers); Jimi Hendrix's "Wait Until Tomorrow" (Axis Bold As Love); Joni Mitchell's "Nathan La Franeer" and "Cactus Tree" (Song to a Seagull); the Beatles "Fool on the Hill" (Magical Mystery Tour); Pink Floyd's "Money" (Dark Side of the Moon); the Mamas and the Papas "Look Through My Window" (Deliver).]

Friday, November 04, 2005

The patty-cakes playing acting had gotten old. Sadly, few notice the same thing about the Sunday Chat & Chews with their same topics, same guests, same pretense as presenting a wide ranging discussion from a wide range of views.

The Sonny & Cher of the Chat & Chews should have driven the lack of diversity home long ago. Sadly Meet the Press may not be able to trot out Mary Matalin and James Carville to sing "I Make You Bored" this sweeps month. Is Carville making nice with David Geffen and suing Mary Matalin for involuntary servitude? Sadly no.

During a week when Harry Reid and the Dems finally found their spines and their voices on Plamegate and the war, it was deeply disturbing to see James Carville parading his tired, old, and utterly clueless act all over the TV -- supposedly offering up the Democratic point of view.Can somebody please, please, please shut Carville up -- especially about Plamegate. His takes on the scandal are utterly compromised by his marriage to Mary Matalin.This isn't like the weird-but-fun old days when they were a sitcom come to life -- running opposing campaigns during the day and sharing pillow talk at night while creating a cottage industry as "the Donny and Marie of politics."That's all in the past. Now, as one of Dick Cheney's most trusted first-term advisors, one of eight founding members of the White House Iraq Group, a witness in front of the Plamegate grand jury, and a close friend of Scooter Libby ("The man you pray you get seated next to at a dinner party," she recently cooed), Matalin is a central player in all this.[. . .]I'll never forget sitting in Lawrence Bender's living room 12 days before the 2004 election, listening to Carville predict that the election was in the bag."If we can't win this damn election," he said, "with a Democratic Party more unified than ever before, with us having raised as much money as the Republicans, with 55% of the country believing we're heading in the wrong direction, with our candidate having won all three debates, and with our side being more passionate about the outcome than theirs -- if we can't win this one, then we can't win shit! And we need to completely rethink the Democratic Party."But, instead of rethinking, the party is returning to the bone dry Carville advice well. He's one of the guiding forces behind the influential Democracy Corps, which recently released a report [PDF] calling for the Democrats to run on a 2006 agenda focused on "health care, education and energy, followed by top end tax cut repeal and homeland security." Thud (that's the sound of Democratic chances dropping). James Carville hasn't had a fresh idea since The War Room stopped filming. It's time for him to take a long, long vacation from the spotlight. And he should take his Cheney/Libby-apologist, WHIG-war-salesman-wife with him.

Wonder why the latter day Dylan attacks Arianna so? He can kiss and make up with the terminally useless and clueless David Broder (among others) but he has a real beef with Arianna (despite the claim of liking her more than most).

Arianna doesn't make nice about his friends Matalin and Carville.

Our latter day Dylan, so supposedly brave, so supposedly worried about the discourse and clowning has never taken on the ugly reality that is the Sonny & Cher Show appearing regularly on Meet the Press. What's it been? Eight years? All that time and never has he taken them to task for their useless dog & pony show or for making a mockery of real issues. Should an issue come up, something resembling an actual one, it's all about their own personalities in their responses. We're supposed to find it "cute" and "endearing."

God forbid we ever get anything to actually think about on the Chat & Chews.

Let's start with ABC's This Week. And let's start with the roundtable:

At the roundtable: Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the house; Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International; ABC News' Linda Douglass; and George Will join me to discuss Karl Rove's uncertain future at the White House, Judge Alito's reception on Capitol Hill, the senate confrontation over Iraq intelligence, and next Tuesday's gubernatorial races and special elections.

See the problem?

Karl Rove, Bully Boy's nominee, Iraq . . .

The "guests" include George Will. Will, Gingrich and Fareed (in pearls as a tribute to Cokie) all on the right. Linda Douglass will presumably playing the role of journalist in the midst of the right wing lion's den.

If you make it to that part, you've already seen ABC suck up to Bill Gates and heard from Chuck Hagel and Joe Biden.

Over at NBC's Meet the Press, Karl Rove's phone buddy Tubby Russert apparently heard that last Saturday Nina Totenberg wasted the public airwaves and tax payer monies plugging Rush Limbaugh ("I do listen!") and just knew Tote Bag was his type of gal which is why she's roundtabling again. Pledge drives can be iffy, the Tote Bag knows, but suck up to the right and you can coast through life. Joining her, fresh from his catfight with the Times Richard W. Stevenson over Scotty McClellan ("Paws off, Richie," Stretch snarled, "I saw him first!") is David Gregory. And the Crockett to Tubby's Tubbs, Ron Brownstein. The non-roundtable guests are Ted Kennedy and Tom Coburn.

Which brings us to Face. CBS's Face The Nation. Give them points for not having Thomas Friedman on. (Jan Crawford Greenburg is back.) That's all they get credit for. Three politicians as guests: Patty-cakes Roberts ("I always planned hearings on the adminstration's use of intel, I just wanted to let it marinate for twelve plus months!"), lone Democrat Dick Durbin and Old Hatchet face. Why is Orrin Hatch even on? Did he play golf with Bob last month?

Check your local listings for air times (all air Sunday). Hopefully you'll check in order to avoid them but if you're a brave (or misguided) soul, good luck to you.

Lastly, I'm out of town and tomorrow's schedule may lead to posts at intervals. Tags require . . .Backing up. When an entry's done, I click on "publish." Then I have the option of clicking on "Republish index" or "Republish entire blog." "RI" takes no more than three minutes. I usually use multiple screens, hit "RI" after hitting "publish" and do the entires one after another. At the end of which I do "Republish entire . . ." which can take five to ten minutes (though it can take even longer).

The tags that Rebecca's asking us all to do change things. If I dodn't hit "Republish entire . . ." after an entry, it won't show up at Technocrati. I probably won't have time to post all the entries at once tomorrow morning as a result. So we'll have our Times entry (possibly two) and we'll have Ruth's Morning Edition Report as well as the thing on Laura Flanders. But it may not all go up at once. (It probably won't.)

So that's the heads up on that.

I wasn't planning on speaking this weekend. As a result of this last minute change in my personal schedule, we'll delay the entry re: Danny Schechter until Sunday. It will be done Sunday evening even if that means doing only one "roundup" post.

The accounts collected by the U.S. military in reports dated Oct. 15-19 were made available to IPS on condition that they would not be quoted directly and that the U.S. military unit forwarding them would not be identified. The first-person accounts gathered by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Nineveh were obtained and translated by Michael Youash, executive director of the Iraq Sustainable Democracy Project in Washington. The names of the NGOs were not provided in the document given to IPS because of fears of reprisals. None of the accounts reported by the military are from Sunnis. All of the sources quoted in those reports are either Kurds or trusted Assyrian Christians who have been advisors to the U.S. military on local developments and are generally favourable to the constitution. Thus they represent the view from those in the province least likely to have a political motive for depicting the referendum as rigged. The reports compiled by the U.S. military include an account of the voting in Mosul by an Assyrian Christian source which observes that Kurds voted for the constitution but represent only a small percentage of the estimated 1.7 million people in the capital -- which holds roughly two-thirds the population of the province. That account contradicts both widely reported explanations for the alleged failure of the Sunnis to achieve a two-thirds majority against the constitution in Nineveh -- that the Sunnis in Mosul were divided over the constitution, and that Kurds represent a very large proportion of the population of the city. The final official vote total for Nineveh was 395,000 "no" and 323,000 "yes". However the IECI in Nineveh had told the media on Oct. 16 and again on Oct. 17 that 327,000 people had voted for the constitution and only 90,000 against, with only 25 out of the 300 polling stations in the province remaining to be counted. Thus, between the two counts, 5,000 yes votes had apparently disappeared and 295,000 no votes had mysteriously materialised -- all from only 25 polling places. No explanation has ever been provided by election authorities for those contradictory data. The U.S. military's informant supports the view that Kurdish and Sunni vote totals in Mosul were significantly altered.

President Bush batted away questions about the CIA leak investigation Friday, unable at an Americas summit thousands of miles from Washington to escape the controversy that has ensnared a top White House official and weakened his own popularity. Taking questions for the first time since the indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, Bush declined to answer calls from Democrats and some Republicans that he apologize for any administration official's involvement in the case.Bush also wouldn't say if staff changes were in the works. He sidestepped a question about whether Karl Rove, his top political adviser who remains under investigation in the CIA leak case, should stay on the job. And the president wouldn't comment on whether Rove told him the truth about his role in the events that led up the investigation.

We'll be noting the Inter Press Service article by Gareth Porter again this weekend. And we'll note this credit: "Gareth Porter is an independent historian and foreign policy analyst. He is the author of 'The Third Option in Iraq: A Responsible Exit Strategy' in the Fall issue of Middle East Policy. "

Red Cross Calls for Access to Detainees in Secret PrisonsThe International Committee of the Red Cross has called for access to detainees held in secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe. The unidentified facilities were revealed in Wednesday's Washington Post. Meanwhile, the European Union announced it would be looking into allegations made by Human Rights Watch that Poland and Romania are the likely sites of the prisons. Both countries have denied the allegations.

Riots Intensify in Paris SuburbsIn France, clashes intensified as rioting in several Paris suburbs entered its eight day. The violence started October 27 following the deaths of two teenagers in the poor area of Clichy-sous-Bois. The two teens were electrocuted in a power grid while fleeing from police. One of the child's parents has filed a complaint with local authorities. The suburbs are home to a large North African community and plagued by chronic unemployment and poverty. Unrest has now spread to at least 20 towns. Police say they've made over 140 arrests. French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has drawn criticism for calling the suburban youths "scum," and pledging a "war without mercy" on them.

Alito Advocated Firing HIV-Positive EmployeesThis news on the Supreme Court nomination of Samuel Alito the Washington Post has revealed Alito co-authored a 1986 Justice Department opinion that said employers should be able to legally fire HIV-positive employees. The opinion stated "fear of contagion, whether reasonable or not," was a sufficient reason for firing an HIV-positive worker. Alito later said : "We certainly did not want to encourage irrational discrimination, but we had to interpret the law as it stands." Meanwhile the Senate Judiciary Committee announced confirmation hearings for Alito will begin January 9th. President Bush had pushed for a confirmation vote by year's end.

A year later, questions remain over the outcome of the Ohio election and whether George W. Bush fairly won the state and the presidency. We explore some of these questions with a debate between Mark Crispin Miller and Mark Hertsgaard. [includes rush transcript]

New York University professor and author Mark Crispin Miller says in an interview on Democracy Now!: "[Kerry] told me he now thinks the election was stolen. He says he doesn't believe he is the person that can be out in front because of the sour grapes question. But he said he believes it was stolen. He says he argues with his democratic colleagues on the hill. He said he had a fight with Christopher Dodd because he said there's questions about the voting machines and Dodd was angry."

In the wake of the Summit of the Americas and President Bush's arrival in Argentina, a People's Summit is also being organized as a counter protest and thousands have gathered to hear Venezuelan President Chavez speak at a rally. We hear from Nobel Peace prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel in Argentina and others.

City of Gretna police chief Arthur Lawson is equally impressive. His justification for trapping Katrina survivors in New Orleans is, he is reported to have said, "If we had opened the bridge, our city would have looked like New Orleans does now: looted, burned and pillaged."

Eyewitnesses report that before they were close enough to speak, officers began firing their weapons over the heads of the New Orleans survivors. Other officers are reported to have said that they wanted "no Superdomes in their city."

The world got a chance to see what too many of us here in this country already know: that racism is alive and well in America.Could it be that the police chief and the sheriff are guilty of a hate crime? How can federally funded roads be blocked by local officials at a time of emergency? Where was the Federal Government that should have been ensuring the lives of all Katrina survivors?Didn't the New Orleans survivors have the right to life? And civil rights?

And where's the outrage?

I've personally learned that many people black and white are outraged about what happened. But you wouldn't know that by the response up here on Capitol Hill, where one of my colleagues is reported to have said to a group of lobbyists: We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."

No one has asked for his resignation, no one has even suggested that he could have chosen less offensive language-no one has suggested that they were offended at all by what he said. And so we are left with what too many New Orleans residents quietly suffered for years:the soft underbelly of American racism.

I'm almost caught up on the e-mails* and one was from Sarita noting a story worth reading but also approriate in context of the above, Mike Davis and Anthony Fontenot's "Hurricane Gumbo" (The Nation):

While Edna was saving the living, his brother-in-law, a police detective from another city, was engaged in the grueling, macabre work of retrieving bodies. "Vincent" (his real name can't be used) went out each night in a Fisheries boat with a scuba diver and an M-16-toting National Guard escort.

"I wore a [hazmat] space suit and piloted the boat. I was chosen because I'm trained in forensics, and since I am a Cajun the higher powers assumed I was a water baby. We worked at night because of the heat and to avoid the goddamn news helicopters that hover like vultures during the daytime. We didn't want some poor son of a bitch seeing his grandma covered with ants or crabs on the 6 o'clock news."

Ants and crabs? "Hey, this is Louisiana. The minute New Orleans flooded it became swamp again. The ecosystem returns. Ants float and they build big colonies on floating bodies the same as they would upon a cypress log. And the crabs eat carrion. We'd pulled the crabs off, but the goddamn ants were a real problem."

Vincent described the exhausting, gruesome work of hauling bloated bodies aboard the boat and then zipping them into body bags. (FEMA neglected water, food rations and medicine, but did fly thousands of body bags into Louis Armstrong Airport.) Although Vincent was supposed to tag the bags, few victims had any identification. Some didn't have faces.

One of us asks about the demographics of death. "We pulled seventy-seven bodies out of the water. Half were little kids. It was tough--no one died with their eyes closed, and all had fought like hell, some slowly drowning in their attics.

"I deal with crime scenes and human remains all the time and usually keep a professional distance. You have to, if you want to continue to do your job. But sometimes a case really gets to you. We found the corpse of a woman clutching a young baby. Mother or sister, I don't know. I couldn't pry the infant out of the woman's grasp without breaking her fingers. After finally separating them, the baby left a perfect outline imprinted across the lady's chest. That will really haunt me. And so will the goddamn cries of the people we left behind.

We'll be doing something on Danny Schechter's "Tell the Truth About the War" program. There were a lot of e-mails and Ava, Jess, Shirley, Martha and I have gone through them. If it's okay, due to the volume on this topic, I'd like to do a summary. I don't know how else, to get anything up on that. I'm running way behind as a result of being sick but if anyone has a problem with a summary, please e-mail the private address and I'll attempt to figure out another way to handle it.

We'll close with Naomi Klein's "The Threat of Hope in Latin America." You can find the article both at The Nation, here, and at No Logo (Klein's site) where it's currently the top item:

When Manuel Rozental got home one night last month, friends told him two strange men had been asking questions about him. In this close-knit indigenous community in southwestern Colombia ringed by soldiers, right-wing paramilitaries and left-wing guerrillas, strangers asking questions about you is never a good thing.The Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca, which leads a political movement that is autonomous from all those armed forces, held an emergency meeting. They decided that Rozental, their communications coordinator, who had been instrumental in campaigns for agrarian reform and against a Free Trade Agreement with the United States, had to get out of the country--fast.They were certain that those strangers had been sent to kill Rozental--the only question was, by whom? The US-backed national government, which notoriously uses right-wing paramilitaries to do its dirty work? Or was it the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), Latin America's oldest Marxist guerrilla army, which does its dirty work all on its own? Oddly, both were distinct possibilities. Despite being on opposing sides of a forty-one-year civil war, the Uribe government and the FARC wholeheartedly agree that life would be infinitely simpler without Caucas increasingly powerful indigenous movement.

We'll also note that in a recent poll (20,000 voters) determing the "top intellectual," Naomi Klein was the highest ranked woman on the list (at number eleven).

Diana Ross and I parted ways over Working Overtime. I could go with the new look (smudged make up, torn jeans) and could even take the jerky title track. What I couldn't take was an album that felt repeating a bromide over and over qualified for lyrics (and "meaning"). As high priestess of love, Diana didn't cut it. Apparently she's passed the robes to Stevie. They don't fit him any better than they did her.

I say that to say: Put on Stevie Wonder's A Time To Love to shake your ass.

Make that your priority and you can't go wrong.

I rushed to Tower the day A Time to Love came out and snapped up my copy. I went home and listened and was despondent to the point of contemplating if I should draw up a will? Then I threw a party and one of the albums playing was A Time to Love.

You can dance to this album.

That's no easy trick. With all the "beats" and name producers, the Disney Kids' hollow product still can't keep you dancing for an entire CD. Stevie is still the "Master Blaster." That's worth noting.

"So Kat, how come you ain't real high on the album?"

Well, for one thing, I've never been fond of romantic duets between father and daughter. Frank and Nancy Sinatra's "Something Stupid" was dubbed "the incest song." Natalie Cole and Nat King Cole carried on the tradition thanks to the "miracle" of techonology. "Unforgettable" stormed the charts but it was creepy as hell and played less like a tribute and more like a struggling artist's attempt to get a hit. (No, I don't mean Nat King Cole.)

On A Time To Love, "How Will I Know" carries on the creepy tradition. It's not a remake of the Whitney Houston hit which might make sense -- the father (Stevie) advising his daughter (Aisha Morris) to "trust your heart." Instead, they trade lines like "How will I know he loves me" and "How will I know she cares" which will creep you out unless you're from an extreme let-it-all-hang-out family.

Before the next parent-child duo contemplates recording a love duet, a bit of advice: DON'T!

That's not the only problem. "From The Bottom Of My Heart" attempts to build a song over a single musical hook. The problem with that is most of us already know "I Just Called To Say I Love You." If we want to hear that song, we'll listen to it.

At six minutes plus, "If Your Love Cannot Be Moved" tests your will if you're just listening. If you're dancing, you can get into the music and ignore the fact that Stevie's tossing off sentences the way INXS tosses flashcards in their video for "New Sensation" (which cribbed from Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" film footage). It adds up to nothing so move that rear and those feet but don't think.

You're better off not thinking throughout the album or you'll be depressed that, as Stevie Wonder runs through another decade as a recording artist, he has nothing to say lyrically.

Tuesday, I learned that a friend had joined the latest version of EST (you all probably know exactly what program I'm referring to). She was full of "You don't know what you don't know" and other drippy sayings that most of us burned out of our systems over bong hits in our teenage years.

I was with Maggie and Toni and we tried to show enthusiasm; however, as the woman continued saying the most trite things as though they possed levels and levels of meanings, Maggie began to giggle, then Toni, and finally I burst out laughing.

"You just don't get it!" the woman shouted storming off.

Yeah, we got it. Self-education for self-interest for the self-focused. Really juvenile. Most of us outgrow it. We look for connections via activism or religion or sex or some combination of the three. We don't sit in a room for hours with no bathroom breaks passing off trite as a journey.

Stevie may not have signed up for those courses but he could certainly teach them. "Love is all that matters" seems to be the theme of this album. It was a pretty good Diane Warren song. But for a man of Stevie Wonder's talents, and presumed wisdom, we expect a little more than greeting cards. There's no "Living for the City" here. There's no "Pastime Paradise" (though the music gets ripped off). The lyrics are the most basic, most banal you could imagine.

Look it, we do need more love today, no question. C.I. and I were at the same World Can't Wait rally and we were doing riffs on "World Can't Wait" ("She needs love"). But Stevie seems to use love in the most generic sense (and most obvious) while expecting the listeners to add their own meaning. Since the album comes with no Lyrics Helper, he's asking a lot.

By the last track on the album, the title song, you get the idea that maybe he should have taken a few more years on this album. The first song tries to say something, the last song is working towards something. It's about love for one another and our interconnectedness. But in the midst of these fifteen songs, Stevie wants to take a long, side trip into bland love celebrated by bland lyrics. (It's as though Stevie's been possed by Paul McCartney.)

"So Kat, you're saying stay away from this album?"

No. I'm saying get it for the music. This isn't sterile music. The lyrics are, but the music is full blooded, breathing. "Moon Blue" is probably the most effective marriage of lyrics and music but if you can ignore the other lyrics and focus on the music, you can really get into this album. Stevie's vocals are strong. He seems to have lost some of his soaring high notes (or is reluctant to use them) but there's a bottom to the voice that's firmer than anything you're probably used to from him.

Shake your ass and appreciate the fact that Stevie knows how to write music and knows how it should be performed.

Maybe after "As," "Supersition," "Pastime Paradise," "Isn't She Lovely," "Overjoyed," "Higher Ground," "That Girl" and assorted others, Stevie's said all he can lyrically?

Bruce Springsteen, though I love him, is not a singer like Stevie Wonder. He can't hide a clunker (such as when he sings one of his favorite phrases -- "wee wee hours"). One of the great joys of The Cowboy Junkies Early 21st Century Blues is hearing things in the lyrics to "Brothers Under The Bridge" and "You're Missing" that you didn't hear before. Margo Timmins haunting vocals add something to those songs. And I have to wonder what A Time To Love would have been like if Stevie had recorded one of those songs or Dylan's "License to Kill"? Or, for that matter, if he reteamed with Syreeta and let her provide some lyrics?

It'll make you sad if you start thinking about it too much (provided you're a Stevie Wonder fan -- I am), about how we've got two wars waging and we've got an administration and a Congress that seems completely uninterested in renewing the Voting Rights Act, a social net that's been brutalized and letting so many slip through, a war built upon lies, and all the fifty-five year old Stevie Wonder wants to write about is "You lift me to the sky/ When I'm flat on the ground" ("Tell Your Heart I Love You") and "Every time I thought I found you/ I was oh so wrong" ("True Love"). If a sixteen-year-old Debbie Gibson turned out these lyrics, you'd be embarrassed for her. Maybe the lyrical well's run dry, maybe he's a master teacher in the latest version of EST, or maybe he's suffering from a midlife crisis?

Whatever it is, the lyrics aren't worth your time. But if you pump up the bass, ignore the words and shake that ass, you can find hours of enjoyment in this album.

The move came after the board began reviewing a confidential report by the inspector general of the corporation into accusations about Mr. Tomlinson's use of corporation money to promote more conservative programming.They included Mr. Tomlinson's decision to hire a researcher to monitor the political leanings of guests on the public policy program "Now" with Bill Moyers; his use of a White House official to set up an ombudsman's office to scrutinize programs for political balance; and secret payments approved by Mr. Tomlinson to two Republican lobbyists.The move - and a statement by the corporation - strongly suggested that the inspector general discovered significant problems under Mr. Tomlinson, but officials at the corporation declined to discuss those findings. Board members who had copies of the report declined to discuss it, citing confidentiality agreements.The statement said the board did not believe that Mr. Tomlinson "acted maliciously or with any intent to harm C.P.B. or public broadcasting." The statement also said Mr. Tomlinson "strongly disputes the findings" in the report.

If he wasn't attempting to harm it and he was acting maliciously, his behavior may be explained by the fact that he's "appalling inappropriate" and a "jerk" (to quote the Times' Deborah Solomon -- July/August 2005, CJR, "Turning The Tables On The Q&A Queen" by Kathy Gilsinan).

Representative Tom DeLay asked the lobbyist Jack Abramoff to raise money for him through a private charity controlled by Mr. Abramoff, an unusual request that led the lobbyist to try to gather at least $150,000 from his Indian tribe clients and their gambling operations, according to newly disclosed e-mail from the lobbyist's files.The electronic messages from 2002, which refer to "Tom" and "Tom's requests," appear to be the clearest evidence to date of an effort by Mr. DeLay, a Texas Republican, to pressure Mr. Abramoff and his lobbying partners to raise money for him. The e-mail messages do not specify why Mr. DeLay wanted the money, how it was to be used or why he would want money raised through the auspices of a private charity."Did you get the message from the guys that Tom wants us to raise some bucks from Capital Athletic Foundation?" Mr. Abramoff asked a colleague in a message on June 6, 2002, referring to the charity. "I have six clients in for $25K. I recommend we hit everyone who cares about Tom's requests. I have another few to hit still."

When Hillary Clinton strode to the podium at Rosa Parks’s funeral, she was greeted as the Presidential heir apparent.But she hasn’t earned that role, and she pales in any comparison between her and Rosa Parks.On the pivotal issue of her day, Rosa Parks rose to the challenge.On the pivotal issue of our day, Hillary Clinton has shrunk from it.That issue, of course, is the Iraq War, which Hillary voted for in the first place. And unlike John Kerry and some other Senators who have since come to their senses, Hillary is still in favor of the Iraq War, 2,000 dead U.S. soldiers later,15,000 wounded U.S. soldiers later, and maybe 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians later.How many lives is she willing to sacrifice on the altar of her ambition?Unlike Rosa Parks, Hillary is not taking a courageous stand on principle. She is engaging in a narrow, opportunistic calculus of political advantage.I think her math is off.I believe a Democrat with guts to oppose this war can win in 2008.But Hillary is under the sway of the same hypnotic triangulators who trained her husband.These are the ideologues of the immoral middle.

Increasingly, the fixers and translators have morphed into journalists -- and brave ones at that -- while services like Knight Ridder (whose coverage of Iraq has been outstanding) and Reuters have been hiring Iraqi reporters. Some of these reporters have then found themselves in American jails for covering the Iraqi insurgents; and almost 40 of them have died (without much note in our press) reporting the occupation and the insurgency -- as well as one, Yasser Salihee, evidently killed by an American sniper while driving to get gas on his day off in the low-level war zone that is much of Iraq. Some of them, like photographer and reporter Ghaith Abdul Ahad, given a chance to write under their own names in major papers, have done extraordinary and daring work.With rare exceptions -- including the Washington Post's remarkable Anthony Shadid (now in Syria), whose dramatic book on his time in Iraq, Night Draws Near, reflects his superb reporting -- American reporters may be almost as crippled by not being Arabic-speakers as by the dangers of Iraq. It remains an amazing fact that an American occupation which began largely without Arabic-speakers -- it was going to be too easy to stock up on people who actually spoke the language -- has since been covered in our press mainly by reporters who can't communicate directly with the people they're covering (unless, of course, they happen to speak English).Still, there can be little question that in Iraq (and possibly elsewhere) the nature of war reporting is undergoing some kind of sea change. Iraq is a war in which correspondents disappear into detention or die not because they are covering dangerous events and happen to be caught in a crossfire, but because they are often prime targets themselves -- of guerrillas and terrorists, of gangs of for-profit kidnappers, or of the American military. As a result, the war (and the Iraq) we see in our newspapers, and especially on our television sets, is a distinctly constricted one, often hardly wider than the nearest giant American military base or Baghdad's well-fortified Green Zone. Perhaps reporters, bearded or not, slipping by as anonymously as possible or in heavily armed security convoys, embedded with American or even Iraqi troops, can make it to spots around Baghdad, or, on rare occasions, elsewhere in the country (as part of military operations), but even for the bravest Western journalists, this has to be a desperately limiting situation.

* Was the 2004 Election Stolen? A discussion with Mark Crispin Miller (author of the new book "Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election & Why They'll Steal the Next One Too") and investigative reporterMark Hertsgaard. * President Bush heads to Argentina where he is expected to be met by massive protests against U.S. trade policy.

Lawyers for Mr. Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, signaled at his arraignment on a five-count indictment that they would also seek to raise First Amendment issues in his defense.The lawyers would not expand on their strategy, but legal analysts said the defense might be planning to seek access to reporters' notes regarding the leaking of a C.I.A. officer's identity. That would set the stage for another round of confrontations with journalists who have proved central to the investigation.Complicating the case still further is what the special prosecutor in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, told the judge on Thursday was a "voluminous" amount of classified material related to the investigation. The process of declassifying that material, blacking out especially secret material, and granting Mr. Libby's new defense lawyers security clearance to review it is likely to take months, lawyers said.The day's events dampened hopes among some Republicans for a quick resolution to a case that has already cast a long shadow over the White House. Immediately after the arraignment, Mr. Libby's lawyers sought to quell any speculation about a possible plea deal to resolve the politically volatile case.

Italy's spymaster identified an Italian occasional spy named Rocco Martino on Thursday as the disseminator of forged documents that described efforts by Iraq to buy uranium ore from Niger for a nuclear weapons program, three lawmakers said Thursday.The spymaster, Gen. Nicolò Pollari, director of the Italian military intelligence agency known as Sismi, disclosed that Mr. Martino was the source of the forged documents in closed-door testimony to a parliamentary committee that oversees secret services, the lawmakers said.

Sciolino has a curious summary of the three part series in La Republicca. It's not the way I read the series. Granted, it's been many years since I studied the romance languages. But the seriesmentions Judith Miller. Where is Judith Miller mentioned in Sciolino's article?

The series mentions Miller (and Michael Gordon)New York Times' article on the aluminum tubes and puts that (false) story into perspective. The Times article today doesn't. And what of the vast details on Larry Franklin and fellow AEI buddy Michael Ledeen as well as Harold Rhode? Was Sciolino's article butchered in the editing stage? Did she cover her bases? Why does the Times think it's okay to crib from La Repubblica yet omit key details (including comments on the Times)? Is it a mistake or is it the Times yet again trying to soft pedal a story and play the readers for idiots?

I thought the new tone, coming from Keller, was to seriously address the problems with Miller's reporting. Here Sciolino has the perfect opportunity to correct one false story (aluminum tubes) the Times (and Miller and Gordon) ran with -- and she can couch it with another paper. So why is it absent from Sciolino's article?

Here's a quick quiz for all you Plamegame experts: What actually are the Justice Department regulations regarding the appointment of 'special' prosecutors such as Patrick Fitzgerald?Here's a hint: DOJ's own rules were ignored in December, 2003 by then Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey when (acting on behalf of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, who recused himself owing to past ties with presidential adviser Karl Rove) Comey gave the special counsel job to his old pal Fitzgerald.Still stumped? Okay, let me tell you. Federal rules (namely Title 28 of the Code of Federal Regulations, Part 600.3) require the appointment of a prosecutor "selected from outside the United States government." As United States Attorney in Chicago - one of the Bush Administration's top Justice representatives in the Midwest - Fitzgerald hardly qualifies.Comey was obviously aware of what he was doing when he ignored the rules to appoint Fitzgerald. In fact, when asked by Fitzgerald for clarification, Comey wrote in February 2004 that his conferral to Fitzgerald of the title Special Counsel "should not be misunderstood to suggest that your position and authorities are defined and limited" by the relevant regulation.Since that regulation stipulates that the ranks of federal prosecutors (like Fitzgerald) should be the last place to look for a special prosecutor, one must wonder: Why was Fitzgerald chosen? After all, the regulations were put in place, and prosecutors like Fitzgerald disqualified, so as to avoid any potential or perceived conflict of interest that might be created by having a member of any given presidential administration investigate that same administration.Yet those rules were ignored by the Bush Justice Department, and the Bush Administration thus ended up with its own 'inside' man running the investigation. To date, that investigation has yielded only the minimum that would forestall a firestorm of criticism - the indictment of Scooter Libby on charges of covering up a crime that apparently never happened. No Karl Rove, no Dick Cheney, not even any answers to the most basic questions underlying the entire affair -- who revealed Valerie Plame's secret identity, and was that in itself a criminal act?

We are witnessing, I suspect, something more momentous than the disgrace of another American President. Watergate was red hot, but always about Richard Nixon, Richard Nixon. This convergence of scandal and failure seems more systemic, less personal. The new political force for change is not the squeamish opposition party called the Democrats but a common disgust and anger at the sordidness embedded in our dysfunctional democracy. The wake from that disgust may prove broader than Watergate's (when democracy was supposedly restored by Nixon's exit), because the anger is also splashing over once-trusted elements of the establishment.Heroic truth-tellers in the Watergate saga, the established media are now in disrepute, scandalized by unreliable "news" and over-intimate attachments to powerful court insiders. The major media stood too close to the throne, deferred too eagerly to the king's twisted version of reality and his lust for war. The institutions of "news" failed democracy on monumental matters. In fact, the contemporary system looks a lot more like the ancien régime than its practitioners realize. Control is top-down and centralized. Information is shaped (and tainted) by the proximity of leading news-gatherers to the royal court and by their great distance from people and ordinary experience.People do find ways to inform themselves, as best they can, when the regular "news" is not reliable. In prerevolutionary France, independent newspapers were illegal--forbidden by the king--and books and pamphlets, rigorously censored by the government. Yet people developed a complex shadow system by which they learned what was really going on--the news that did not appear in official court pronouncements and privileged publications. Cultural historian Robert Darnton, in brilliantly original works like The Literary Underground of the Old Regime, has mapped the informal but politically potent news system by which Parisians of high and low status circulated court secrets or consumed the scandalous books known as libelles, along with subversive songs, poems and gossip, often leaked from within the king's own circle. News traveled in widening circles. Parisians gathered in favored cafes, designated park benches or exclusive salons, where the forbidden information was read aloud and copied by others to pass along. Parisians could choose for themselves which reality they believed. The power of the French throne was effectively finished, one might say, once the king lost control of the news. (It was his successor, Louis XVI, who lost his head.)

* Was the 2004 Election Stolen? A discussion with Mark Crispin Miller (author of the new book "Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election & Why They'll Steal the Next One Too") and investigative reporter Mark Hertsgaard. * President Bush heads to Argentina where he is expected to be met by massive protests against U.S. trade policy.

About Me

We do not open attachments. Stop e-mailing them. Threats and abusive e-mail are not covered by any privacy rule. This isn't to the reporters at a certain paper (keep 'em coming, they are funny). This is for the likes of failed comics who think they can threaten via e-mails and then whine, "E-mails are supposed to be private." E-mail threats will be turned over to the FBI and they will be noted here with the names and anything I feel like quoting.
This also applies to anyone writing to complain about a friend of mine. That's not why the public account exists.